dots and spots

With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,

I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?

I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

I beat and pound for the dead,

I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

Vivas to those who have fail'd!

And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!

And to those themselves who sank in the sea!

And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!

And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

homage to my hips

BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

these hips are big hips

they need space to

move around in.

they don't fit into little

petty places. these hips

are free hips.

they don't like to be held back.

these hips have never been enslaved,   

they go where they want to go

they do what they want to do.

these hips are mighty hips.

these hips are magic hips.

i have known them

to put a spell on a man and

spin him like a top!

REACH, EDWARD F. LEONE

Reach with your eyes to see the need.

Reach with your ears to year one plead.

Reach with your mind to comprehend.

Reach with your hand to help friend.

Reach with your voice to to ask what's wrong.

Reach with your heart to aid those who long.

Reach with your soul to seek only good.

Reach with your wealth to help brotherhood.

One of the highlights of his life was his participation in the Spanish Civil War. Originally drafted into the republican militia, he fought and was wounded as a member of the POUM's "Lenin" brigade and later clashed with the Stalinist Communist Party of Spain in May 1937. In his book Dying in Catalonia (1938) he uniquely captured the experiences and his action.

B.Σ 23-24

Abraham Lincoln

Poem: Abraham Lincoln is my name

Abraham Lincoln is my name And with my pen I wrote the same I wrote in both haste and speed and left it here for fools to read

John Milton

Paradise lost

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos

Walt WhitmanTo a Locomotive In Winter

Thee for my recitative, Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining, Thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive, Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides, Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance, Thy great protruding headlight fix'd in front, Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple, The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack. Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels, Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following, Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careening; Type of the modern--emblem of motion and power--pulse of the continent, For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee, With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow, By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes, By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.

Fierce-throated beauty! Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all, Law of thyself complete, thine old track firmly holding, (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,) Thy trills and shrieks by rocks and hills return'd, Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.

ORPHEUS - William Shakespeare

Don't Go Far Off - Pablo Neruda

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because - because - I don't know how to say it: a day is long and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach; may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance. Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking, Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Boston Hymn Ralph Waldo Emerson

The word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came, As they sat by the seaside, And filled their hearts with flame.

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

After Fifty Years

willian faulkner

Her house is empty and her heart is old,

And filled with shades and echoes that deceive

No one save her, for still she tries to weave

With blind bent fingers, nets that cannot hold.

Once all men’s arms rose up to her, ‘tis told,

And hovered like white birds for her caress:

A crown she could have had to bind each tress

Of hair, and her sweet arms the Witches’ Gold.

Her mirrors know her witnesses, for there

She rose in dreams from other dreams that lent

Her softness as she stood, crowned with soft hair.

And with his bound heart and his young eyes bent

And blind, he feels her presence like shed scent,

Holding him body and life within its snare.

From Venus And Adonis by William Shakespeare

COME away, come away, death,    And in sad cypres let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath;    I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,    O prepare it! My part of death, no one so true    Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,    On my black coffin let there be strown; Not a friend, not a friend greet    My poor corse, where my bones shall be thrown: A thousand thousand sighs to save,    Lay me, O, where Sad true lover never find my grave    To weep there!

D.P

V.N

A Fairy Song by William Shakespeare

Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire! I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs upon the green; The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours; In those freckles live their savours; I must go seek some dewdrops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

"How do I love thee?" Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

"Alone" Edgar Allam Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been As others were -- I have not seen As others saw -- I could not bring My passions from a common spring -- From the same source I have not taken My sorrow -- I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone -- And all I lov'd -- I lov'd alone -- Then -- in my childhood -- in the dawn Of a most stormy life -- was drawn From ev'ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still -- From the torrent, or the fountain -- From the red cliff of the mountain -- From the sun that 'round me roll'd In its autumn tint of gold -- From the lightning in the sky As it pass'd me flying by -- From the thunder, and the storm -- And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view --

‘The Burden of Itys’.

This English Thames is holier far than Rome, Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea Breaking across the woodland, with the foam Of meadow-sweet and white anemone To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there, Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!

Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take Yon creamy lily for their pavilion Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake A lazy pike lies basking in the sun His eyes half-shut,—He is some mitred old Bishop in partibus! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold …